Leviathan features a lot of footage of the sea, but no dialogue. Photo: Sony Pictures Classics.
In the sea, everything can be a monster. Sometimes, that monster is tired, hungry and bloody as it roars through the waves, trapped in the net and lurking in the darkness above and below and all around.
Leviathan is not a tranquil. It’s loud and startling, and it gets louder and more startling. Co-directors Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor experiment with sensory ethnography, a technique that combines filmmaking and anthropology to put the viewer into the field.
Shot with small durable cameras attached to the heads of fishermen, poles stuck in the sea and buoys, immersion is the only word for it. There are no words directed toward the audience, only snatches of conversation among the fishermen and one scene where a television can be heard. Leviathan does not have the narrative moviegoers have come to expect. It is more an experience than a film.
Switches in the point of view carried a beauty and flow like the sea they captured. From a fisherman’s point of view to a fish’s, the changes followed the natural rhythm provided by the sea and the unsteady cameras without noticeable transitions.
“We didn’t want to make a human-centric film; we wanted to engage with everything, with the fish, with the water … Try everything, go behind, below, above and then switch subtly from point of view, be the monster, be the birds, liquid and solid,” Véréna says.
Leviathan gets up close and personal and stays there. Certain shots are left on the screen for a long time as the fish heads slide back and forth, nearing the opening on the side of the boat before finally going over. Scenes of the boat rocking and the waves crashing from a distance, of red starfish dancing in a blue-green swirl and of a fisherman falling asleep during a commercial for Colon Flow, his stare breaking the fourth wall, are as long as five minutes.
A quote from the Book of Job, part of which reads, “Upon the earth there is not his like who was made without fear,” is displayed in white gothic font on a black screen.
Leviathan is something new and vastly different, a documentary, a horror film and a trip to sea. There is beauty, pain, assaults of and on the sea and its great mysterious monster of a being.
“We are tired, very,” Véréna says of her and co-director Lucien’s experience making the film. “We are ready to put the leviathan back into the abyss.”
Vox rating – VVVV
The Rating System:
VVVVV = Awesome! See it twice.
VVVV = Definitely go see it.
VVV = Hmm … it’s okay.
VV = Eh. DVD, maybe?
V = Don’t bother.
